Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Friday, Aug 21, 2026

Big Tech had its first big debate moment, and Democrats came out swinging

Big Tech had its first big debate moment, and Democrats came out swinging

The presidential candidates agreed that tech consolidation is an issue, but not all agreed to go as far as a break up.

Presidential candidates at the Democratic debate Tuesday night were asked about how tech companies should be regulated, if at all.

Warren’s plans to “break up Big Tech” have steered much of the conversation around how to deal with the industry.

The presidential candidates agreed that tech consolidation is an issue, but not all agreed to go as far as a break up.

Big Tech had its first big moment in the 2020 presidential election during Tuesday night’s Democratic debate.

The big question from the debate moderators: Do the largest tech companies need to be broken up?

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s call to break up Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple framed much of the discussion around tech regulation. While each candidate who responded to the question agreed that unregulated power of these large firms poses a problem, few committed as firmly to break them up.

Here’s how each candidate answered the question of how Big Tech companies should be regulated:


Andrew Yang

Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur himself, has been something of a darling to Silicon Valley tech workers. The top three groups of contributors to his campaign are employees from Google parent company Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft. But even Yang said the tech industry deserves more oversight.

“As usual, Senator Warren is 100% right in diagnosing the problem,” Yang said at the debate. “There are absolutely excesses in technology and in some cases having them divest parts of their business is the right move. But we also have to be realistic that competition doesn’t solve all of the problems.”

Yang said no one “wants to use the fourth-best navigation app” and that breaking up Big Tech companies won’t necessarily “revive main street businesses around the country.” Antitrust action also won’t solve health problems that are correlated with children’s early exposure to technology, Yang said.

Yang suggested that the current antitrust framework, developed in the 20th century, is not adequate to deal with today’s industries.

“We need new solutions and a new toolkit,” he said.

Later in the debate, Yang proposed an alternative solution to giving consumers more power in comparison to Big Tech companies.

“The best way we can fight back against big tech companies is to say our data is our property,” Yang said. “Right now, our data is worth more than oil. How many of you can remember getting your data check in the mail? It got lost, it went to Facebook, Amazon, Google. If we say this is our property and we share in the gains, that’s the best way that we can balance the scales against the Big Tech companies.”


Elizabeth Warren

Warren’s rhetoric around the Big Tech companies has steered much of the conversation around how to regulate the industry. The senator came out with her plan to “break up Big Tech” back in March and announced prior to the debate Tuesday that she would not accept donations from Big Tech executives over $200, widening the pool of donors from which she won’t accept large contributions. Warren has also said she won’t take large donations from executives at big banks, Big Pharma or fossil fuel companies.

“You can’t go behind closed doors and take the money of these executives and then turn around and expect that these are the people who are going to actually finally enforce the laws,” Warren said on the debate stage.

Addressing her stance on Big Tech, Warren used Amazon as an example, saying the company “runs the platform, gets all the information, and then goes into competition with those little businesses. Look, you get to be the umpire in the baseball game or you get to have a team, but you don’t get to do both at the same time. We need to enforce our antitrust laws, break up these giant companies that are dominating Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Oil, all of them.”

One area where Warren did not push as hard on tech was over Twitter’s decision to keep President Donald Trump’s tweets and account on the platform. Asked by Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., why Warren didn’t join her call for Twitter to suspend his account, Warren said, “I don’t just want to push Trump off Twitter, I want to push him out of the White House.”


Kamala Harris

Addressing her call for Twitter to suspend Trump’s account, Harris said it is “a grave injustice when rules apply to some but not to all, and in particular when the rules that apply to the powerless don’t apply to the powerful.” Harris wrote a letter to Twitter’s CEO earlier this month requesting he consider suspending Trump’s account for allegedly attempting to “target, harass” and “out” the whistleblower who made Trump the subject of an impeachment inquiry.

Harris separately addressed a question about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s claim that splitting up large tech companies would make it harder for those companies to tackle problems like disinformation around elections.

“That’s a ridiculous argument he’s making,” Harris said.


Amy Klobuchar

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., pointed out her position as the ranking member on the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, which has been heavily involved in the conversation around Big Tech by questioning tech executives about their practices as well as the agency heads investigating the large tech firms. Klobuchar said that in her private sector experience representing companies trying to enter the telecom market, she saw prices go down in the long distance market once more competition was introduced. She called the current moment “another Gilded Age.”

Klobuchar suggested taking a different approach to the antitrust conversation, however.

“Start talking about this as a pro-competition issue,” Klobuchar said. “This used to be a Republican and Democratic issue, because America, our founding fathers, actually wanted to have less consolidation, we were a place of entrepreneurship.”


Bernie Sanders

Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., seemed to take a similar stance to Warren on the debate stage, condemning the consolidation of industries including not just tech but also finance and media.

“We need a president who has the guts to appoint an attorney general who will take on these huge monopolies, protect small business and protect consumers by ending the price fixing that you see every day,” Sanders said.


Beto O’Rourke

Beto O’Rourke said the key to tech regulation is treating companies like publishers rather than utilities. The former Texas congressman pointed to the false ad Warren recently ran on Facebook to see how far the company would go in refusing to fact check ads by politicians.

“We would allow no publisher to do what Facebook is doing, to publish that ad that Senator Warren has rightfully called out, that CNN has refused to air because it is untrue and tells lies about the Vice President,” O’Rourke said. “Treat them like the publisher that they are, that’s what I will do as president.”

O’Rourke said he would “be unafraid to break up big businesses if we have to do that,” but made a subtle jab at Warren by saying he doesn’t believe “it is the role of a president or a candidate for the presidency to specifically call out which companies will be broken up. That’s something that Donald Trump has done in part because he sees enemies in the press and wants to diminish their power, it’s not something that we should do.”


Cory Booker

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., said the problem with tech is not just potentially anticompetitive behavior, but also how it is used “to undermine our democracy.”

“We have a reality in this country where antitrust from pharma to farms is causing trouble. And we have to deal with this,” Booker said. “As president of the united states I will put people in place that enforce antitrust laws.”


Julian Castro

Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julian Castro did not specify how he would tackle the Big Tech companies but said he believes “that we’re on the right track in terms of updating how we look at monopolistic practices.”

Castro said, “We need to take a stronger stance when it comes to cracking down on monopolistic trade practices, and that’s what I would do as president.”


Tom Steyer

Billionaire entrepreneur Tom Steyer said he agrees with Warren that “monopolies have to be dealt with,” but left regulation open as an alternative to a break up. Steyer said that to beat Trump, candidates must focus not only on how it will break up businesses, but also how it will help the economy grow in other positive ways.

“We’re going to show the American people that we don’t just know how to tax and have programs to break up companies but also talk about prosperity,” Steyer said. “Talk about investing in the American people. Talk about harnessing the innovation and competition of the American private sector.”

Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
Cristiano Ronaldo and Georgina Rodríguez Sign Prenup Protecting Their Separate Fortunes
Google Launches Pixel 11 With Gemini AI at the Center of Its Hardware Strategy
Turkish Parliament Passes Landmark Bill Granting Conditional Amnesty to Disarmed PKK Members
Jorge Messi, Lionel Messi’s Father and Longtime Agent, Dies at 68
AI’s Next Bottleneck Is Power, Not Just Nvidia Chips
Meta Raises AI Spending Target to as Much as $145bn Despite Pressure Over Returns
Joe Biden’s Cancer Has Spread Beyond His Bones, Hunter Biden Says
Why 2027 Could Be a Strong Year for Stocks—and Why the Forecast Is Fragile
Why Markets May Look Quiet in August After Big Tech Earnings
Trump’s Top General Seeks an Exit Strategy From Iran War, Report Says
Brock Lesnar Retires From Wrestling, Closing a Career of Rare Athletic Range and Lasting Controversy
UFO: Pentagon Releases Video of Unidentified Object Tracked Over Middle East
Ukraine Tells Senate Republicans Its Drone War Offers a Blueprint for America
Weight-Loss Drug Boom Tests the Limits of Prescription Advertising Rules
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan Sign Mutual-Defence Pact
AI Is Remaking the US Economy, From GDP Growth to iPhone Prices
A SpaceX Rocket Is About to Crash Into the Moon — and Scientists Hope to Watch
Modern Slavery Decisions Broaden the Al Fayed Inquiry’s Frame
FIFA’s Retreat Leaves a Larger Question Over Who Guards the Game
Finland Deploys Commercial-Scale Thermal Batteries Using Crushed Rock to Store Renewable Grid Energy
Valued at $109 Million: F-35B Fighter Jet Crashes in Southern California
US Says It Has Carried Out Heavy Strikes on Iran After Attempted Attacks on Its Forces
Over 24 Hours in the Air: Qantas Airbus Completes Record-Breaking Test Flight
Arrest Warrant Issued in Lebanon for Tycoon Spotted Meeting Netanyahu in Washington
Trump says Israel ‘would not survive’ without US
Nvidia Reportedly Takes Vast Texas Data-Centre Lease to Underwrite AI Expansion
FIFA’s Private-Investment Plan for World Cup Rights Draws European Revolt
Following OpenAI's Cyberattack: 'Most Companies Still Do Not Understand What Is Coming'
OpenAI Sued After ChatGPT Allegedly Discouraged Emergency Care Before Near-Fatal Embolism
Miliband Sets Climate and International Law at Centre of UK Diplomacy
Pentagon Discloses Nearly 100 US Troop Injuries During Renewed Iran Fighting
Trump Readies New Tariffs as Temporary Global Levy Nears Expiry
High Prices Push Coffee Drinkers Toward Whole Beans and Home Brewing
Trump Draws Boos and Podium Scrutiny at Spain’s World Cup Triumph
Spain Defeats Argentina in Extra Time to Win Second World Cup
Turkey Explores S-400 Transfer to UAE in Bid to Rejoin F-35 Program
US Retaliates Against Iran After Two American Troops Killed in Jordan
Proposed U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Pact Could Permit Limited Uranium Enrichment Under International Safeguards
Why Kentucky Fried Chicken Became KFC—and Why the False Explanations Persist
Iran Claims It Destroyed Bahrain’s Main Artificial Intelligence Center in Missile and Drone Strike
Ukrainian Drones Strike Wildberries Warehouses Deep Inside Russia
Reported CIA Mission Helped Clear the UAE’s Path to Advanced US AI Chips
Artificial Intelligence Capital Fuels Markets While Governments and Regulators Face Mounting Strategic Tests
China’s Moonshot’s Kimi K3 Narrows the Gap With Anthropic Through Scale, Openness and Lower Cost
Gold and Cash Seizure Puts Indonesia’s Senior Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Under Investigation
The Ledger Will Not Trust on Faith
Passenger Bound for Germany Refused to Sit Beside a Woman on a Plane — Then Slapped a Flight Attendant
Ukraine’s Leadership Rift Spills Into the Streets as Protesters Target Army Chief
The Ten World Cup Finals That Defined Football History
Smartphones Are Getting More Expensive, Sales Are Collapsing, and Even Apple Admits: "Prices Will Rise"
×